Printing used to be the main format of distributing visual information, such as documents, drawings, and images. The development of modern display technologies allows publishers of information to provide and update visual information electronically and, in many cases, remotely. A display or display device may include a large number of pixels, with each pixel formed at the intersection of a row electrode and a column electrode. A display may provide an image when pixels are activated or configured to reflect the various dots that are combined to provide the desired image.
Depending on various driving methods, display mechanisms, or display techniques, display devices generally may be categorized into two types: mono-stable and bistable. A mono-stable display, such as TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD (liquid crystal display) has pixels that may maintain certain optical states when an external electric field is applied. A bi-stable display, such as cholesteric LCD, has pixels that may maintain two or more optical states even after an external electric field is removed. In other words, an image displayed on a bi-stable display device can be maintained without consuming electricity. External power is needed only when displayed images need to be updated or refreshed.
A bi-stable display device may be desirable in some applications to avoid excessive power consumption, the cost of additional circuitry required by mono-stable displays, or both. But bi-stable display devices with a large display area or a high resolution may create technical challenges. For example, when a device is writing a portion of the image to a row, signals are sent to those pixels. The pixels surrounding the selected pixels may be affected by signals, making the surrounding pixels active or partially active. The change of status in those pixels may affect the image level initially provided to those pixels and may reduce the image quality or affect the display effect. Therefore, there may be a need for a display that may overcome or be configured to overcome one or more of the drawbacks of traditional displays.